


Starchildren

by Minew



Category: GIRLee - Fandom, SHINee
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fantasy, Fluff, Friendship, Legends, M/M, Romance, merfolk, mermaid!au, platonic, slowburn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-13 18:14:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11765580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minew/pseuds/Minew
Summary: While Jinki almost drowns and Kibum struggles with breaking the law, their best friends Junghee and Minjung are suddenly face to face with legends they thought impossible.All the while Taemin is struggling with the feeling of incompleteness.





	1. Drowning

**Author's Note:**

> The legends mentioned in this story are created entirely by me. 
> 
> The merfolk in Starchildren refer to themselves using Maori-words but I recommend not looking for their actual translation and just take them for what they are. You don't need to know what they translate to in English to understand the story.

It’s an accident when he falls into the lagoon. It's a game and a step too close to the edge. He falls through vegetation before he hits the water and sinks below the surface. He cannot swim, he is going to die. Despite the knowledge that he’s on his own in the deep pool of water, his body fights to find the way up. There is no way up.

Everything is murky and he cannot see with the salt water stinging his eyes every time he opens them.  
  
The water is silent and it only serves to scare him more. There is no one to help him as he drowns and the need to breathe burns in his lungs. He takes a gulp of salt water and chokes as his lungs fill with water.  
  
And then someone whispers in the water.  
  
Look at him. What a fool.  
  
He turns his head and opens his eyes to look for the voice but there is nothing in the water. He’s dying and he’s hallucinating. It fills him with a sort of last peace and he takes another gulp of water while his body protests with the will to live.  
  
He’s dying. He’s dying.  
  
The whisper is still there, still present, still overwhelming and he feels goosebumps raise on his arms as something touches his legs in a soft, tickling motion. This jerks him from the peace and he wants to scream, wants to look for whatever it is that’s touching him but his body is fighting a losing battle.  
  
Do something.  
  
And then he breaches the surface and heaves after air to fill his lungs. He’s coughing, his eyes fluttering at the sharp sunlight and the noises from all around him overwhelm him. Something tickles his foot but he’s too busy surviving to notice the celadon color that disappears into the deep.  
  
Someone grabs his chest and only then does he really understand that he hasn’t died. His professor is behind him, asking him to please stay still so they can get up safely.  
  
The rescue team have them on the ground above the lagoon in a couple of minutes and paramedics surround him. In the corner stands his best friend Junghee and bites her thumb nail while tears are streaming down her cheeks.  
  
He’s taken to the hospital with a helicopter and nobody sees the ming colored eyes that follow the commotion on land.  
  
  
  
It’s an accident when the human falls into the lagoon. He knows because humans aren’t allowed to swim here. It’s their safe haven, a place for them only. It’s where they hide when they’re young, where they go when they’re old.  
  
It was hidden until few years ago when a human found it. Now it’s an attraction, a place for humans to admire nature but they’re still not allowed to swim here.  
  
The human struggles, splashes around with an air of panic. He doesn’t really understand because the water is soothing, is helping him die a peaceful death. He can’t imagine dying anywhere else but in the soft comfort of the water. He’s hidden in the deep behind the vegetation on the bottom as he watches the human struggle.  
  
The tapairu on his right looks at him with her azure blue eyes and clicks her tongue in a disapproving manner.  
  
“Look at him,” he says and turns to lock gazes with her. “What a fool.”  
  
They both turn around to look at the human again. The human is sinking towards them, body no longer flailing, instead finding comfort in death.  
  
He swims a little closer out of curiosity. He knows he’s not supposed to look at humans. Humans are dangerous but this one is dying. There is no way this one is going to talk about them to the other humans.  
  
He is hiding behind a large piece of kelp in the dark water when she swims passed him towards the human. He gasps and reaches out towards her, to stop her, but barely grazes her celadon tail and then hisses. The water becomes upset as his frustration translates throughout it. She turns to look back at him.  
  
“He’s dying,” she says. “He’s dying.”  
  
She swims around the human, soft fin grazing the leg. He quickly swims towards her and grabs her wrist to pull her back down towards the sand bottom. They don’t get very far. She looks at him with annoyance.  
  
“Do something.”  
  
He rolls his eyes as she grabs his hand and makes it move in the water. It makes him look ridiculous but she keeps moving his hand in an up-and-down motion and he gives up. With a twist of his wrist and a slow motion upwards he lets the water help the human towards the surface. He grabs her hand and pulls her with him towards the bottom when another human hits the water and grabs the struggling young one. The one that almost saw them, the one who survived.  
  
She’s on her way towards the ocean, but he can’t help himself when he swims towards the surface, hidden by the murky water and close to the stone wall of the lagoon as he observes how they save the human.  
  
  
  
”Jinki,” Junghee says in a small whisper. He’s lying in the hospital bed with an IV drip in his left hand. Junghee is sitting beside him. His mother was here earlier but had had to leave. Junghee decided to stay here. Even though he’s awake, she hasn’t been able to get in contact with him.  
  
”What happened?” she asks again in a whisper.  
  
She’s been trying to coax it out of him ever since he got rescued. Her eyes are red from her previous crying and her make-up is smeared under her eyes but Junghee doesn’t care about how she looks. Jinki doesn’t say anything, however. He just keeps staring into the white ceiling as if it can tell him how he survived his near-drowning experience.  
  
Junghee wants to believe it was his own will to survive but she knows he can’t swim and that him being here is nothing short of a miracle. Someone pats her shoulder a few seconds later and she feels lips pressed to her cheek. She doesn’t turn around to look at her boyfriend as he, too, greets Jinki in the hospital. Jinki ignores his presence too.  
  
Junghee sighs a little but nods when her boyfriend asks her to please go home with him. They can visit tomorrow.  
  
  
  
“Kibum!” Minjung says in a vexed voice. “You can’t just let them die!”  
  
Kibum glances annoyed at her but doesn’t say anything. He continues swimming towards the ocean and Minjung soon catches up with him.  
  
“Listen to me!”  
  
He doesn’t and she sighs exasperated. She doesn’t understand why he acts so high and mighty after he’s been manipulating the water. It’s not the first time they’ve witnessed a human drown and it probably won’t be the last, but it’s the first time Kibum has been so adamant about not saving a human. It’s been the first time she has had to ask him specifically.  
  
It’s not because they save humans a lot; they’re technically not allowed to but Kibum has never been sticking to the rules. She wants to know why this one is different, why she had to ask him to save the human but he doesn’t want to talk to her. Minjung passes him so she can stop him with a hand on his chest.  
  
“Kibum, please.”  
  
He just shakes his head in a resigned manner and swims passed her again. She’s staring at his seashell colored tail, a rare color amongst them, as it disappears into the dark blue beneath her.


	2. Chapter 2

Jinki doesn’t say anything in the next couple of days. The doctors wonder whether or not his near-drowning experience has caused brain damage but Jinki knows better. It’s not because he cannot talk, he just doesn’t know what to say when they ask him. He doesn’t understand how he survived when he was supposed to die. He didn’t know the way to the surface but something pushed him in the right direction. The university awarded the professor for his courage to save a student but it wasn’t Jinki’s professor.

He can still feel the tickling touch at his leg, under his foot and he knows it’s something else. Sometimes he hears the whispers in his dreams like he’s underwater, drowning but not panicking, just savoring the feeling of being underwater. It makes so little sense to Jinki that he can’t possibly relay it to the doctors and ask them if they know what it possibly could be.  
  
Junghee comes every day, begs for him to recognize her as if he suddenly has forgotten whom she is. So when he finally decides to break his silence and greet her, she starts crying with relief and wraps her arms around him in a tight hug. Jinki lightly pats her shoulder and jokes that Taemin is going to be jealous but they both know that Taemin doesn’t care.  
  
Junghee has been Jinki’s best friend since they went kindergarten. She has been there for him when he fell and broke his arm at the age of 4, as he got bullied for being smart at the age of 13, as he figured out he was gay at the age of 14 and as he experienced his first heartbreak at the age of 16.  
  
She, too, wants to know why he hasn’t spoken but Jinki still isn’t able to tell her. So he keeps the dreams, the fleeting touches and the whispers to himself.  
  
  
  
Kibum doesn’t talk to Minjung in the next couple of days. He can’t forget the human in the lagoon, the only human he wasn’t supposed to get close to, the only human he wasn’t supposed to save. There isn’t supposed to be survivors in the lagoon. Nobody knows Kibum saved a human in the lagoon because both he and Minjung knows it’s against the law to save drowning humans. He can only imagine the distress it would cause his parents if they knew he saved a human in the lagoon.  
  
So he doesn’t tell anyone and Minjung doesn’t tell anyone either. Still he keeps remembering the way the brown hair had flowed in the water when the human accepted to death. He keeps seeing the flailing limbs, panicked movements stirring up the water around the human.  
  
Kibum shakes his head a little and continues counting seashells. He’s here to forget, here to remember that his purpose isn’t saving humans in the lagoon. Kibum hasn’t gone back to the lagoon either. His māmā had been horribly worried when he hadn’t been there for ahoroa ceremony but Kibum can’t return. Not as long as he remembers the human.  
  
He sighs and looks up when a shadow flows above him. A kōhine is swimming above him, playing with a turtle and Kibum sighs deeply.  
  
“Taeyeon?” he calls and the kōhine looks at him. Her tail is a mix of orchid purple and apricot and her hair is a beautiful silver. She bends at the waist so she can look at him.  
  
“Kibum!” She swims towards him before she wraps her slim fingers around his wrist and tugs at him a little. “Let’s play!”  
  
He sends her a gentle smile and releases his wrist from her grip.  
  
“Not now, Tae. Would you mind getting Minjung for me?”  
  
She blinks twice before she nods and hurries off towards their hapori to get Minjung.  
  
Minjung has been with Kibum ever since they were small. He doesn’t really remember how he got to know her considering her māmā is worth a lot more than his own, but it doesn’t really matter how they met anyway.  
  
Minjung has been with Kibum throughout his doubt, his hatred and his acceptance. She has been there when he got caught breaking the law and she has been there when he stubbornly wanted to run away.  
  
She lets her fingers run through his vine green hair and laughs when she accidentally loosens the shell that holds his small braid in place so his fringe doesn’t fall into his eyes when he swims.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she says when her laughter turns to giggles and then she starts braiding his fringe again. Kibum just sends her a small smile.  
  
  
  
The dreams get more often and they get haunting.  
  
Jinki wakes up a week later in his own bed, sweat dripping off of his forehead and his sheets all wet. It’s like he’s drowning once again but the water in his dreams is no longer comforting, safe. He doesn’t remember the voices that whisper around him when he wakes up but he knows they’re there when he dreams. He keeps reliving his own death but in his dreams there is no one to save him from the upset water.  
  
There’s a nagging feeling in his chest that somehow keeps reminding him that he was supposed to die. He shouldn’t have survived. Whatever saved him wasn’t supposed to save him.  
  
He sighs and closes his eyes when his alarm clock starts ringing. His father is worried, he knows even without him saying it out loud, and his mother has been calling Junghee over more often than usual to check up on him.  
  
Jinki heard them discuss therapy an evening after he woke up after drowning in his dreams. He doesn’t tell them he heard them and they don’t bring the subject up to him. Still their lingering gazes tell him that they are worried he’s damaged after his experience. And maybe he is damaged. Nobody goes through a near-death experience without some sort of trauma. Jinki can’t fool himself to believe that the dreams are only that, however. He still doesn’t tell anyone.  
  
His mother is cooking a quick breakfast when he finally emerges from his bedroom. She doesn’t say anything, only sends him a smile and then turns back to finish what she has started. Jinki barely eats in the morning. He never did but for some reason it has the worried lines on his mother’s forehead deepening. His father greets him with a soft squeeze to his shoulder before he sits down opposite of him.  
  
Jinki rises from his chair and ignores both their protests. In his bedroom, he turns to stare out of the window, the hornbeam hedge that frames their property is swaying gently in the wind and the soft lime green leaves are standing proud against the columbia blue sky. There is a robin flying to and from an area in the hedge, building a nest for a family that is to come. On the ground is a worm fighting a losing battle against a blackbird.  
  
Jinki sighs a little before he turns back to look at his room. His bed sheets are crumbled together on his bed, his clothes spread on the floor. His desk is filled with papers and books he hasn’t bothered to look in. The book shelves are filled with figurines and old legends and in the corner of his room sits his telescope.  
  
Jinki hasn’t been looking at the stars ever since he almost drowned. He’s been far too concerned with the water than he has with the myths of the starchildren. The knock on his door has him looking up and towards it. Junghee peeks inside with a small smile.  
  
"Jinki?” She smiles. Her nadeshiko pink hair falls over her shoulder and rests on her small chest. “Are you coming?”  
  
He nods a little and gets up to grab his bag. She gently slips her arm around his elbow and pulls him with her.  
  
  
  
Kibum shakes his head in frustration. He doesn’t understand it. There is absolutely no reason for him to still remember the human. There is no reason he keeps thinking about the same thing over and over again. It makes so little sense to him. He wants to tell someone about what he did, that he misused his powers to save a human in the lagoon, but his māmā would have to report him to the ariki tapairu if she knew what he had done.  
  
He can’t be mad at Minjung either, the tapairu hadn’t wanted to get him in trouble and she certainly hadn’t predicted that Kibum would still be thinking about the human weeks later. He hits his fist against a rock and glares at the pufferfish that gets surprised. Kibum is tired of feeling guilty for remembering.  
  
Minjung finds him seconds later and laughs when the pufferfish huffs at her too.  
  
“It’s okay,” she says and pokes the pufferfish gently on its upper lip to get it to relax. Kibum envies her a little bit.  
  
When she turns her attention to him, he ignores her.  
  
“What’s wrong with you these days? Your māmā is so worried she even spoke to me.”  
  
Kibum continues to ignore her until her long zaffre blue hair flows into his vision. Her face joins it a second later. He sighs deeply and then turns to look at the seabed, catching a glimpse of his seashell colored tail in the process and he sighs again.  
  
“I can’t forget the human,” he says and Minjung gasps.  
  
“Kibum!”  
  
He can hear all the accusations and the fear but it’s not like that, it really isn’t. He’s not in love with the human, that would be stupid and he didn’t even know the human.  
  
“Not like that Min,” he says and she relaxes her shoulders a little.  
  
“Then what?”  
  
She grabs his hand and pulls him towards the surface, towards the last rays of sunshine that warms the ocean. When they break the surface, she gently pulls her hair away from her face and looks at him.  
  
“I shouldn’t have saved him,” Kibum says and blinks in order to remove the tears that is collecting in his eyes. She looks at him with surprise.  
  
“But Kibum, you’re the only one of us who can save the humans…”  
  
Her voice is a soft whisper but it makes him angry.  
  
“I’m not supposed to. The law says that we cannot interact with humans. And I know we’ve done it before in the ocean and it was fun but the lagoon is sacred, Minjung. The lagoon is ours and ours only. The human should have died!”  
  
His outburst leaves her frozen and she can only stare when he turns around and dips back into the sea and disappears. He’s mad when he returns to the hapori and he doesn’t mean to scold Taeyeon for playing with the turtle but he does so anyway before he leaves to find kelp he can braid.  
  
  
  
Jinki is staring into the murky blue water in the lagoon. The vegetation around him creates an uncomfortable silence but he keeps still where he’s sitting. He shouldn’t be here to begin with but he hadn’t been able to stay home. There is a compelling power that keeps pulling him close and even as he’s here, looking into the water that should have killed him, he still doesn’t feel close enough.  
  
Jinki isn’t stupid enough to jump back into the lagoon, however. He doesn’t have a death wish per se. There is just something more, something different, something he needs to learn from this and until he figures out what it is, he can’t just leave.  
  
He hasn’t told anyone that he’s here. His parents believe he’s at the university, Junghee thinks that he’s at home and he even went as far as tell Taemin that he was at home as well. He can only hope that Junghee doesn’t seek him out after classes and learns that he’s been lying all along. But it’s not important as he stares at the dark water and wishes it could just tell him what he needs to learn. Jinki sighs a little as he lays back into the vegetation and stares into the tree tops and behind them the sky.  
  
The sun is warming his tan skin, even through the trees and it isn’t long before he falls asleep between vegetation and bird song.  
  
  
  
Kibum is staring at the green and brown cliff edges that leads into the lagoon. The water is silent but it makes him calm as much as the uncertainty of land makes him shiver with unknown anxiety. The water is welcome around him. Kibum has no business in the lagoon other than looking at the world he shouldn’t ever want to visit.  
  
He’s not even sure why he’s observing the human ground. It’s a place he’ll never set foot and it’s a place that scares him. He knows that he could be seen if someone passed the lagoon, that he could spoil everything by having his torso above the water. His tail is hidden by the water but that would serve very little protection if someone really was to see him.  
  
Yet Kibum is still here. There is something pulling him towards the lagoon, towards the land he can only observe from the water. It’s as if the green and brown that surrounds him is trying to tell him something, answer his questions but they stay silent.  
  
Kibum cannot talk to vegetation or mud the way he can communicate with water. He wishes he could as he looks up and stares at the sky through the tree tops.  
  
The heaven is grey, clouds heavy with water and it doesn’t take long before they become too heavy and the rain starts falling. Kibum doesn’t mind the water but the water from the sky doesn’t have the answers either and Kibum can only stare at the plants around him as he tries to figure out why he is here and why he saved the human he was not supposed to save.  
  
  
  
It’s on purpose that Junghee follows Jinki to the lagoon. She observes him from afar as he stares into the blue water and her heart beats hard in her chest as she fears he’ll topple over and fall back into the water that nearly robbed her of her best friend. Jinki doesn’t fall into the water, but instead sits on the grass and sighs heavily.  
  
Junghee leans onto a tree trunk and lets her head fall back against the heavy tree in relief. The thump sounds throughout the forest and Jinki turns around to see her. Junghee bites her lower lip when she gets eye contact with her best friend and Jinki turns away from her. He doesn’t say anything and it has Junghee even more worried.  
  
She slowly emerges from her spot behind him and sits down beside him. The water is silent in the lagoon and so dark she feels a shiver down her spine.  
  
“Jinki,” she tries but he ignores her. Junghee sighs and pulls her knees closer towards her chest and wraps her hands around them. They sit in silence.  
  
  
  
It’s on purpose that Minjung follows Kibum to the lagoon. Kibum has been different from what he used to be and Minjung cannot get him to talk. It worries everyone but he still doesn’t talk. So Minjung sees no other way. It surprises her when she finds him in the lagoon, hair floating on the surface as he stares at the green and brown that surrounds the lagoon.  
  
The more Minjung looks, the more it looks like he’s staring at the human world.  
  
She’s below him, hiding in the kelp but she forgets that he can communicate with the water and it surprises her when he turns around and stares at her. She wants to say something, wants to apologize or excuse herself but she has no words and Kibum just turns around again and continues his staring at the human world.  
  
Minjung swims a little closer but doesn’t say anything. Kibum ignores her existence and Minjung can feel the worry run down her spine.  
  
There’s silent between them as they observe the human world above them.  
  
  
  
Jinki yawns and puts his cheek against the cold wood in front of him. He hasn’t been in class in the past month, has been skipping classes even though he should have been back two weeks ago. But ever since Junghee found him he has been unable to rightfully skip to sit on the edge and stare into the blue lagoon. So now he’s here, trying not to fall asleep after yet another sleepless night.  
  
Jinki doesn’t have nightmares of drowning anymore but the emptiness of his sleep is almost worse than the feeling of dying and he doesn’t appreciate it.  
  
He closes his eyes and listens to the sounds around him, his professor talking and computer keys being tapped in a gentle rhythm as people take notes. There’s the sound of a pen on paper beside him as the boy next to him draws something in a notebook.  
  
Jinki doesn’t react when the lecture room becomes quiet, when the tapping stops and the talking subsides. He doesn’t react when the professor calls his name and he doesn’t react when the boy next to him gently tries to shake him awake by his shoulders. He doesn’t react until someone from behind hits him with a text book and grins at him. Jinki glares at Junghee but she doesn’t seem apologetic in the slightest.  
  
When the professor dismisses them, she hurries to catch him in the hall and gently pat the top of his head.  
  
“You okay?” she asks and Jinki grunts at her and ignores her. She laughs and reaches out towards Taemin when he passes them in the hallway.  
  
“See you, Jinks!” she calls after him as she follows Taemin in the other direction, their fingers interlaced, and Jinki doesn’t want to smile but he can’t help the way the corners of his lips curl up a little.  
  
He hasn’t told her about the lagoon or why he’s there so often. He doesn’t know how to tell her about it all and even though he’s tired, getting back to his routine helps a little on his mood. He still spends a lot of time at the lagoon, trying to figure out what saved him that fateful day but his exhausted mind cannot find any logical answers.  
  
  
  
Kibum yawns and puts his cheek against the cold stone in front of him. He’s observing the young nohinohis playing with the giant oceanic manta rays and he’s not supposed to fall asleep but it’s boring. The small ones are laughing as the rays transport them a few meters away from him and then back again. Kibum isn’t even sure why it’s his turn to look after them today when there are others who could’ve done it, but since he was ordered to do it, he’s not going to complain. He can’t change it anyway, so he might as well get the best out of it.  
  
Kibum has been thinking about going back to the lagoon but ever since Minjung found him, she has been keeping an eye out for him. She doesn’t want him to return without telling her why he keeps going back, but she won’t understand why he keeps returning. She knows it’s because of the human but Kibum knows that she thinks it’s something else.  
  
She wonders if he’s in love with the human world but Kibum isn’t. Kibum dislikes the human world. It doesn’t scare him any less after weeks of observing it. The human world is foreign and Kibum is so used to being in contact with the water that losing that ability and being on his own scares him.  
  
He sighs when a manta ray passes him without a nohinohi and then someone pats his shoulder.  
  
As he turns around he meets the brown eyes of Bora, another kōhine from their hapori. Her fins are floating in the soft water like tendrils from the sturdy jasmine purple tail and Kibum can’t help but envy her beauty.  
  
“I’ll take over from now on,” she says and reaches out to grab a small nohinohi from the back of a manta ray. The child complains but Bora just puts it back in shallow waters so they can play with the clown fish that has started to gather. She nods back towards the hapori and sends him another soft smile.  
  
Kibum nods gratefully before he flips his tails and lets the movement send him towards their hapori. His māmā is talking to the ariki tapairu when he returns and they both turn to look at him.  
  
Their gazes have him bowing his head in fear of what they know.  
  
  
  
Junghee means well when she tells Jinki’s parents about his trips to the lagoon. She wants him to be safe and she can’t do that alone. Although he has been coming to school and seems to be forgetting his traumatic experience, she just doesn’t trust him to be seated at the edge. Jinki’s parents are grateful she tells them. Jinki, however, is not very grateful.  
  
She looks at Taemin and sighs again for the second time in less than 5 minutes. Taemin pats her shoulder and sends her a sad smile.  
  
“You did it because you care for him,” he says but it feels hollow and Junghee just shakes her head.  
  
“He hates me now.”  
  
Taemin shakes his head and leans close to peck her cheek. Junghee can’t shake the fear that she has lost her best friend however. She knows that even if she hadn’t told his parents she would have lost him sooner or later to the murky water in the lagoon. Junghee wants to trust Jinki, she does, but it’s becoming increasingly harder when he doesn’t tell her anything.  
  
She sighs another time and lets Taemin comfort her while she prays to Gods above that her best friend will forgive her.  
  
  
  
Minjung looks at her māmā and then at Kibum’s. She wants to tell them that Kibum is acting up because he saved a human in the lagoon because she asked him to. But the words will only serve to outcast him from the hapori and she doesn’t want that. With the additional information her māmā has just gotten, he’ll be one of the only māitiiti left in the hapori and that is bad enough.  
  
Kibum is silent as he listens to the two older wahine. Minjung is circling them a few meters away like a predator but she isn’t going to attack any time soon, she just wants to be there for her best friend when he hears the news.  
  
She sighs as she stands still. If only she hadn’t told him to save the human, maybe they wouldn’t even be here. She wouldn’t worry about him as much as she does, his fascination with the human world scaring her.  
  
When her māmā leaves the other wahine and her son, Minjung hurries towards them, only to stop when she feels the upset waters around them and hears the silent sobs.


	3. Chapter 3

The moon is full and lighting up the roads like a small sun in the dark streets. Jinki is standing on the porch, telescope tilted towards the sky as he stares at the stars. Some are blinking a little, making him remove his eyes from them so he can turn around and note it down in his little notebook.  
  
On the table behind him is an old book spread open on the pages that tell the legends of starchildren. The need to go back to the water still sits in him and he knows the water still has something to teach him, but getting back into the legends he had been so obsessed with before he almost drowned has been easier now that he has been grounded.  
  
Jinki crosses out an old star that seems to have vanished, either in its death or to become the soul of another human on Earth according to legends. Jinki knows the former is more likely but he finds the legends of the latter more interesting. When he turns back to his telescope he yawns and fiddles a little with his phone. It’s 3 in the morning and he must be up again at 6.30.  
  
He leaves the telescope on the porch under the night sky as he hurries back inside and climbs into bed. Jinki doesn’t sleep peacefully. He keeps trashing in his sheets, dreams that should have left, back to haunt him in the middle of the night. He wakes up an hour before his alarm but he’s too scared to fall back asleep. He doesn’t know why the dreams are back.  
  
  
  
It is dark around him, the moon unable to shine its light down here. Kibum hasn’t been able to rest for the past hours after he got the news of his pāpā’s passing. His māmā has been worried about him, he can feel it in the waters. He also knows that she’s not the only one who are worrying but Kibum has been ignoring everybody as best as he can. If he had been able to, he wouldn’t have been listening to the worry and sorrow that translates into the water but he can’t suddenly stop listening to the water.  
  
He fumbles with his fingers, intertwines them into kelp before he releases it and starts over again.  
  
Kibum hasn’t seen his pāpā in years. The tāne had left when he was a nohinohi, but Kibum has regularly been calling out to him throughout the water, smiling whenever he got answers back of his well-being. Now, however, there is no one to answer his lonely call and none of the wahine are able to communicate through the water like he is.  
  
Kibum bites his lower lip and tugs too harsh on the kelp. It breaks off and tangles around his fingers and Kibum sighs a little. He wants to be better at handling his sorrow but for some reason, isolation seems like the only solution. He hasn’t told Minjung but he knows that she knows. It would have been impossible for her not to have overheard her māmā when she got the message. Kibum also knows that Minjung would love to be there for him if he needs her. He just isn’t sure he really needs her.  
  
He flips his tail and propels forward slowly, almost colliding with a longfin mako shark. Kibum ignores the slow swimmer when he seeks towards the surface again and finds the hapori.  
  
  
  
Junghee looks at Jinki disapprovingly. Jinki shrugs a little and tries a smile.  
  
“What?” he asks innocently, booklet in his hand. Junghee just casts a glimpse at the booklet again and Jinki sheepishly hides it behind his back.  
  
“Why are you joining the excursion to the lagoon again? Do you really have a death wish?”  
  
Jinki can hear how distressed she is in her voice. He doesn’t have a death wish but ever since she found him at the lagoon he has been forbidden access there. This, however, is the perfect excuse. Jinki shouldn’t really care about the lagoon anymore, but now that the dreams have come back and is haunting him again, it makes sense to go back. He needs to find the answers to his questions of his survival.  
  
“No?” he answers and Junghee sighs and reaches behind him so she can snatch the booklet from him.  
  
“I’m coming with you.”  
  
This has Jinki’s eyes widening.  
  
“What? No! You don’t have to.”  
  
Junghee just looks at him with a glare and starts looking through the booklet. The last page is a fairytale of a species of mermaids staying in the lagoon. According to the fairytale the lagoon is magical. She snorts. Jinki leans over so he too can read the fairytale. When he finishes, he chuckles.  
  
“You don’t believe in this, right? You’re not constantly there because you’re stupid enough to believe mermaids exist, right?” Junghee says and Jinki rolls his eyes.  
  
“Come on, I’m not stupid.”  
  
“You believe in starchildren, so you never know. Tell me why you want to go so badly?”  
  
She looks up and gets eye contact with him and no matter how much Jinki wants to look away, he can’t. Junghee may be petite but when she decides on something, it’s impossible to convince her otherwise.  
  
“I … I have nightmares after the almost-drowning. I don’t want to die, but I just want to see the lagoon again. Is it weird?”  
  
It feels like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders when he finally admits that he has nightmares. He can’t possibly tell about his hallucinations and the weird drive that calls him to the lagoon but he can tell her about the nightmares. Junghee raises an eyebrow and then nods.  
  
“Yes, it’s weird,” she says. “But you have always been weird and I love you so I’m coming with you to make sure you don’t trip and drown for real this time.”  
  
She then hands the booklet back and Jinki chuckles.  
  
“You’re the best,” he calls after her as she leaves to find her next class. Junghee just raises her hand above her head in a wave.  
  
  
  
“You should come, Kibum,” Minjung tries. He’s hiding in a small cave. “They’re going to blow bubbles to honor his memory. You know, he was well-liked…”  
  
Kibum sighs a little and flips his tail a little, just enough to generate enough current to push her away.  
  
“That’s the problem,” he murmurs and hopes Minjung doesn’t hear him. He’s not that lucky, however. The tapairu has an excellent hearing.  
  
“Talk to me, Kibum… Please…”  
  
Minjung doesn’t like begging but it has been a week and Kibum has been hiding in the cave for almost all of it. They barely talk and he barely eats and she’s getting worried. This is more worrying than the human in the lagoon and while she still doesn’t understand what the big deal is, she tries to forget it for his sake.  
  
“The water is filled with so much sorrow,” he says after a while and Minjung swims closer so she can look at him. “I can’t stand it. Everybody is grieving and it’s so hard.”  
  
Minjung reaches a hand out to gently touch the scales of his tail and then hands it towards him.  
  
“Come on. It’ll get better. You’re not alone, I promise. I may not be able to listen to the water, but I can listen to you.”  
  
She smiles when Kibum grabs her hand and lets her pull him from the cave.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says but Minjung shakes her head.  
  
“Come with me to the tangihanga. It’ll be over then. Your māmā is still going to grieve, but the rest of the hapori will start thinking about other things. The water will calm down.”  
  
She squeezes his hand slightly and Kibum sends her a small smile.  
  
“If only I could turn it off,” he says and chuckles a little. It’s forced but it has Minjung smiling a little.  
  
“Hey, I understand. You have me.”  
  
They look at each other in silence before Kibum lets go of her hands.  
  
“Uhm… Min?” he says and she nods a little. She tilts her head to the side. “About the lagoon…”  
  
This has her feeling uneasy and a chill slips down her spine.  
  
“Yeah?” she says and fears the worst. Kibum just sends her a smile.  
  
“I … No, nothing. We should prepare for the tangihanga.”  
  
He leaves her in front of the cave, his seashell colored tail disappearing in the horizon and Minjung looks after him. There is still something bothering him but she’ll get him to spill soon enough. Now she needs to attend the tangihanga for his pāpā and that is far more important than any human will ever be.  
  
  
  
The water in the lagoon is dark and scary. The bottom is hidden under the dark water but Jinki knows how deep it truly is. He shivers a little and feels Junghee’s hand on his arm pull him a little from the edge. The guide talks about the vegetation and the animal life that is seemingly unique to the lagoon and the area around it. Jinki doesn’t really listen. The water is calling to him, trying to tell him the answers but he can’t interpret them. If only he could get close without drowning.  
  
A strong urge to jump down suddenly fills him and it scares him so much that he takes a few steps back, toppling over Junghee and both of them end on the forest floor. The guide looks at them with a raised eyebrow before he continues talking about the birds that can be found in the treetops.  
  
“What?” Junghee asks concerned but Jinki shakes his head.  
  
“I must’ve fallen over a root or something,” he says and gets up before he helps her up. Junghee doesn’t say anything but she knows it’s not true because there are no roots sticking up of the ground here.  
  
  
  
The sky is dark and cloudy, not even stars showing. Kibum is staring up from where he’s hidden in the vegetation. It has been a long time since he returned to the lagoon but now that he’s here he finds it hard to leave. He wants to but for some reason feels compelled to stay. There are things he needs to know and now that he’s here, it’s like the water is keeping him captive until he finds the answer. He sighs a little and dips under the water, that obscures the dark sky above.  
  
Kibum had felt awful during the tangihanga, but not because of the ceremony or the grief that rippled through the water. The knowledge that he has crossed boundaries and violated the law by saving a human in the lagoon makes him feel guilty. His pāpā and māmā don’t deserve a son like him.  
  
He cannot change the past, however and as much as it bothers him that Minjung convinced him to save the human, it is now something else that keeps him in the lagoon, staring at the human world. It still scares him and he doesn’t like it, doesn’t want to associate with humans, but there are things it can teach him and answers it will give him. Answers Kibum is longing for and afraid to find.  
  
  
  
Jinki looks through the old book he has been given. The pages are yellow and easy to tear so he moves them gently. The legends of the world have been collected in this book but there is one legend Jinki has always liked. The myth of the starchildren, of souls being born of stars. It creates unique humans and souls, all born out of the goodness in the heaven and it takes the phrase a star in heaven to another level. Jinki has always been fascinated with the idea that every human has a star inside of them and that is why he has tracked stars for as long as he can remember.  
  
When he almost drowned, however, it had been overshadowed by the longing towards the water.  
  
He shifts in the bed and stretches his arms above his head before he turns back to the book. He hasn’t found the book to look through the starchildren myths, though. He has the book in his lap to find another legend of creatures in the sea.  
  
Jinki never really believed in any of the myths in the book outside of the starchildren, but the guide that had led the excursion to the lagoon had spoken of those creatures and it has him curious. Jinki sinks into his pillow when he finds the legends and starts reading.  
  
  
  
Kibum looks through the box on the wrecked ship. There are plenty of pearls but those are not in his interest. Kibum is looking for something else that can help him unravel the mysteries of the human world that may help him in interpreting the answers he can’t find in the lagoon.  
  
He rarely comes to the cliffs because they’re dangerous and although they’re deadly, a lot of humans still sail through here daily. The chance of getting spotted in broad daylight is high but Kibum can’t look in the evening when the great whites lurk around in the darkness of the night.  
  
He dives further into the shipwreck and around a corner, only to find himself in what looks like the captain’s area. There are a lot of scary technology Kibum has never seen before, worn by the sea, but it’s still proof of humans and their capabilities.  
  
Kibum rattles through the chains that keeps the door on the other side locked when he sees the shadow to his left. He sinks to the floor as fast as he can and feels his heart beating rapidly in his chest. What are great whites doing here now? He can feel the danger in the water. The predator is large, 4 meters at least and it’s looking for prey. Kibum bites his lower lip while he slowly starts twirling his index finger in small circles. It keeps his scent close to him and allows him to stay hidden as the shark swims past.  
  
Kibum doesn’t know how long he stays on the floor of the shipwreck, heart beating in his chest, but when he finally leaves the shipwreck with fast tail flicks, the shark is nowhere to be seen.  
  
  
  
Junghee isn’t entirely sure what has her staring down the lagoon in the afternoon. She knows Jinki hasn’t been here for a couple of days, and really, she shouldn’t be either, but she’s curious and she wants to know what makes Jinki come here. She knows that he has nightmares but that can’t possibly be the only reason and she doesn’t understand why he would seek out the place he nearly died. So there has to be something else. Junghee told Taemin about it, asked him if he wanted to come but Taemin hadn’t been able to, which means that she’s here alone.  
  
She’s sitting on the edge, looking at the dark water that nearly swallowed her best friend months ago, when she sees a few bubbles near the wall. She directs her attention to the place, stares it down as she watches how more and more bubbles surface. And then, just as she’s about to turn her gaze away, a woman with zaffre blue hair breaches the surface. Her skin is pale in contrast to the hair. She stretches her arms above the water and laughs towards the sky. Junghee is staring, unable to tear her eyes away from the woman. No one is allowed to swim in the lagoon so what is she doing down there?  
  
Junghee wants to call out to her, wants to ask if she needs help to get out, but then the woman turns her head and stares into Junghee’s brown eyes and Junghee shivers. The woman blinks twice before she widens her eyes in horror and dives under the water again, ripples on the surface the only sign to prove that she was ever there.  
  
  
  
Minjung bites her lower lip as she watches Kibum talk to Taeyeon and Bora. She wants to understand and Kibum isn’t talking. No, that’s not true, because Kibum did tell her that he felt bad for saving the human because the lagoon is sacred. Minjung never really understood that, however, but she wants to do her best to understand why Kibum has been avoiding the lagoon. There must be something, right?  
  
She sneaks into the lagoon under pretense of finding a shell she must have lost weeks ago during the tangihanga, but the more she stares at the human world, the less she understands it.  
  
Minjung gets bored soon and starts blowing bubbles with her hands. It’s a favorite past time of hers, a habit she doesn’t realize she has. The brown and green of the vegetation surrounding the lagoon piques her curiosity not long after, however, and Minjung breaches the surface to look at it more closely. Maybe if she observes it closer, the answer Kibum won’t tell her will come to her.  
  
She stretches her arms above her head, towards the sun and lets the heat warm up her body, before she feels a laugh bubble up through her throat. Minjung loves the lagoon. She loves the deep water, the sun and the serenity that is usually found here.  
  
She turns her head to the side only to look directly at a human girl sitting on the edge opposite of her. Slowly she lets her arms sink below the surface again. The human has nadeshiko pink hair and deep brown eyes and her skin is tan in the most gorgeous way Minjung has ever seen. She blinks once, twice until she realizes that this is a human, an actual human, and the thought has her terrified.  
  
When Minjung dips under the water, it only now occurs to her that she has been spotted. This is not good.  
  
  
  
Jinki turns towards his notebook filled with star observations and he starts dotting down the results from the night’s star watching. Taemin leans over him while he eats his cupcake.  
  
“What’s that?” he asks and Jinki looks at him disapprovingly.  
  
“Where’s Junghee?” Jinki asks instead and Taemin shrugs.  
  
“Sick.”  
  
Jinki raises an eyebrow but doesn’t counter Taemin. Taemin should know what his girlfriend is doing, but Jinki isn’t fully sure he believes it. It’s not his business, though, so he’ll stay out of it.  
  
“Really, though, what is it?” Taemin says and eats the last of his cupcake. Jinki sighs a little.  
  
“Stars…” he says and Taemin raises an eyebrow in question. Jinki ignores him.  
  
It has been a week since he last went to the lagoon, but as he turned back to the myths of the starchildren, the nightmares ceased again and the need to go watch the deep waters has been less these past days. Jinki appreciates it, though. Staring into the water is unnerving and he still isn’t able to find the answers he’s looking for.  
  
  
  
Kibum counts the nohinohis before he sends them off towards the ocean sunfish. Taeyeon laughs at him from behind a coral and he looks back over his shoulder.  
  
“What are you doing back there?” he asks and the kōhine shrugs a little.  
  
“Nothing,” she says but Kibum knows it isn’t the truth. He swims towards her and Taeyeon backs a little away, her small tail not as efficient for swimming as Kibum’s.  
  
“Have you seen Minjung?” he asks and Taeyeon shakes her head a little.  
  
“Nope,” she says. Kibum hasn’t seen Minjung very much in the past 24 hours. He knows she went to the lagoon because the water ratted her out but ever since then, it has been impossible for him to pick up her wipes. It should have worried him but Kibum can’t really find it in himself to be extremely worried about her.  
  
Minjung has always been like this. She’s adventurous and often swims far away, just to see new things. It’s just rare that she does it on her own. Kibum frowns and Taeyeon laughs at him.  
  
“Don’t worry too much. Hey, did you find what you were looking for last week?” Taeyeon asks and reaches out towards Kibum. Kibum pulls back and shakes his head.  
  
“Nah, maybe it’s on time I stop thinking about it too.”  
  
Taeyeon tilts her head in a question but Kibum shakes his head, looks over his shoulder and widens his eyes when he sees one of the small nohinohis drifting away with the current. He doesn’t say goodbye when he whips around and hurries off to save them.  
  
  
  
The next time Jinki goes to the lagoon, he’s driven by a strange desire to say goodbye. It’s not a desire to die or to leave the world, but a desire to leave the lagoon behind. He hasn’t been plagued by thoughts in the past few weeks. It’s a desire to put the past behind him and to stop thinking about what could have happened and why he survived the drowning. There are things he needs to learn and if he keeps getting drawn to the lagoon, he is never going to break free. Jinki doesn’t want to come here anymore.  
  
It surprises him, however, when he finds Junghee sitting on the edge, staring at the water. Her hair is unkempt and her clothes askew but she doesn’t react to his arrival. Jinki tilts his head as he observes her and when she sways a little in the wind, he fears she’s about to jump into the lagoon. Junghee stays on the edge, however, her legs tucked under her as she continues to look at the water. Jinki silently approaches her and sits down beside her, 20 centimeters between them.  
  
“Hey,” he says in a low voice and Junghee whips her head around to stare at him.  
  
“Jinki!” she says in a slight panicky voice and Jinki can feel the worry slinking down his back. “I … What are you doing here?” Jinki looks at her before he turns towards the water.  
  
“Saying goodbye,” he says and hears Junghee’s breath hitch. “Not like that.”  
  
He turns around to send her a smile and he can see how she slowly relaxes in his company.  
  
“You know,” Jinki starts. “When I fell into the lagoon, I was supposed to drown. I can’t swim and I was sinking towards the bottom. I had no idea what way was up and what way was down. Actually, I had almost found peace. There were voices in the water. It sounds stupid but I guess my hallucinations were pretty strong.”  
  
Jinki turns to look at Junghee, who just listens to him with wide eyes. This is things he has never told anyone.  
  
“I don’t know how it worked but something pushed me towards the surface. That’s the only reason I survived. I don’t know how to describe it but I knew right then that I had been saved by something. So, I came here for answers but there were no answers. The more I thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed but I had nightmares and I heard the voices in my sleep and I felt so drawn towards the water. There seemed to be something I had to learn.”  
  
He sends her a small smile.  
  
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you anything. Knowing you were supposed to die and yet still being alive had me feeling kind of crazy.”  
  
Junghee nods a little when Jinki stops and turns to look at the water in the lagoon again. It feels odd to say it out loud. He’s not sure he likes the feeling if he’s honest, but now that he has said it out loud there are no take-backs.  
  
“I get it,” Junghee says and Jinki turns back to look at her. She isn’t looking at him. “Do you still have nightmares?”  
  
Jinki shakes his head, but Junghee doesn’t see him.  
  
“No. It’s on time I leave the trauma behind, right?”  
  
Junghee nods a little and then turns her head towards him.  
  
“Thanks for trusting me with this,” she says and Jinki sends her a small smile. “You’re forgiven for making me worry so much.”

Jinki chuckles and wraps his arm around her shoulder.  
  
“Why are you here?” he asks and Junghee shakes her head a little.  
  
“It’s so calm out here. I think it might have become my new favorite spot in the forest,” she says and looks at him with a small smile. Jinki just nods. It is calm out here. But it is not the reason she’s here. He doesn’t want to pry, however.  
  
  
  
The next time Kibum goes to the lagoon, it’s to stop looking for answers. He saved a human in the lagoon despite the lagoon being sacred but the past is the past and it should stay as that. He can’t continue feeling guilty for it and he can’t continue looking for answers he doesn’t find and he’d rather be able to come here during the next ahoroa ceremony to celebrate with his māmā and the rest of the hapori without feeling captive. He also misses the way the water talks to him in the lagoon, the whispers hushed and gentle compared to the ocean water without the uncertainty of the unknown. Kibum doesn’t want to be limited by his past actions anymore.  
  
He drifts into the lagoon and settles against the lagoon wall, only to find the celadon colored tail above him. Kibum raises an eyebrow as he watches Minjung’s tail hold her close to the surface. She’s staring at something above her and Kibum gets curious. He slowly moves closer to her and lets his fingers trail up her tail until he reaches the lionfish pectoral fins on her hips. Minjung startles at his touch but sends him a small smile when she notices she isn’t in danger.  
  
“Hey,” she says and turns back towards what she was looking at. Kibum follows her gaze and notices that she’s looking at the edge and the human world above them.  
  
“Hi,” he says. “What are you doing here?”  
  
Minjung just shrugs a little and her hair floats softly around them both.  
  
“I’m just looking. Why are you here?” she asks and Kibum sighs a little.  
  
“I’m going to stop looking for answers.”  
  
Minjung turns to look at him with a confused look when he says it.  
  
“Answers?” she asks and Kibum nods.  
  
“Yeah, it’s been weighing on my mind a lot. You know, the lagoon is sacred and that I struggled with the fact that I saved the human. Every time I entered the lagoon it felt like I was being suffocated with the fact that I betrayed the hapori but at the same time, it felt like the human world could give me answers to a question I’m not really sure I ever understood. It’s just the feeling of staring at the human world and knowing that there is something I have to do. Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve been looking for these stupid answers to these stupid questions and I’m tired of it. I want to be here for the ahoroa ceremony with you all and not feel like I betrayed everybody. I want to come here and listen to the water and forget myself and the human. So I’m here to put it behind me.”  
  
Minjung looks at him when he finishes.  
  
“Kibum,” she says and Kibum sends her a smile.  
  
“It’s really no big deal. Sorry I didn’t tell you. Pāpā died and I wasn’t really prepared for that, so... I think it was when I was looking through the shipwrecks that I realized that the human world can’t answer me anyway.”  
  
Minjung widens her eyes at that.  
  
“Looking through the shipwrecks?”  
  
Kibum blinks at her.  
  
“Yes?” he says with uncertainty. Then Minjung breaks into a wide smile.  
  
“Why didn’t you invite me?” she asks and Kibum chuckles.  
  
“I almost got eaten by a great white monster.”  
  
Minjung shakes her head but winds her arms around him in an embrace anyway.  
  
“I’m so glad my adventurous best friend is back. None of this guilty feelings over humans. Promise me to tell me if you ever feel like that again,” she says and Kibum nods and pulls her closer against him.  
  
“You too,” he whispers into her ear. She stills but doesn’t let go of him and Kibum doesn’t say anymore. She is keeping secrets but Kibum isn’t going to pry.


	4. Chapter 4

Jinki watches as Junghee stares into nothing. Taemin is talking about a professor that has been unfair during his first two lectures but neither Jinki nor Junghee actually listens to him. Jinki is worried. Junghee hasn’t been herself ever since he found at staring at the lagoon. There is something bothering her but every time he tries, she shakes her head and changes the conversation topic. That in itself is odd because Junghee has never been one to keep secrets.  
  
Taemin sighs when he realizes they’re not listening and gets up from his seat. Jinki looks up and tilts his head questioningly.  
  
“I’ll find Jongin,” he says and then leans down to press his lips to Junghee’s cheek. Junghee almost jumps out of chair at the touch and Jinki tries to force the smile away from his lips. There is something wrong.  
  
  
  
Kibum watches as Minjung wraps a string of kelp around her wrist, only to let it loose and repeat the motion. She’s staring at nothing in particular and Kibum finds it odd.  
  
He has tried suggesting they search the outskirts of the bottom before the steep drop, he has suggested they find the wrecks and look for treasures. He even suggested looking for fishermen struggling in the ocean but none of his suggestions make Minjung excited. It’s not right.  
  
He backs a little away and collides directly with another merperson behind him. Taeyeon giggles and pats his shoulder when he turns around and creates a small whirlpool under his tail.  
  
“I’m okay,” she says. “What are you looking at?”  
  
She lifts herself in the water so she can look over his shoulder and Kibum flicks his tail and forces her down again when he creates a small current below her.  
  
“Your curiosity is going to kill you someday,” he says and Taeyeon rolls her eyes.  
  
“Says you,” she says but doesn’t make a new effort to look towards the tapairu. Kibum looks over his shoulder when Taeyeon swims back to the hapori. She’s right, though. Kibum and Minjung used to be curious. Now there is something bothering his best friend and he can’t figure out what it is.  
  
  
  
Junghee shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t sit at the edge of the lagoon and almost hope for the zaffre-haired woman to appear. It might as well have been an illusion. Junghee doesn’t really understand what she saw that day and she doesn’t understand why she’s suddenly here again. She doesn’t know what she’s looking for and the memories of the day she almost lost her best friend still haunts her, yet she’s still here, still waiting for something that can’t possibly have had happened to happen again.  
  
She sighs and lays down so she can stare at the sky through the treetops. The sky is blue and the sun is casting its golden rays through the scattered leaves. Junghee can feel the heat even in the shadows and she closes her eyes and lets it overtake her. The lagoon feels magic like this but it still bothers her that she has seen the other woman in the water. It makes no sense.  
  
She knows Jinki has been fascinated with legends ever since they were kids but they can’t possibly be real. Junghee yawns and gets back into a sitting position.  
  
When she opens her eyes, she stares at the still water and sighs again.  
  
  
  
Minjung shouldn’t be here. There are many things to see in the open ocean, many things to explore with Kibum, yet Minjung finds herself in the lagoon more often than not. She wants to see the human girl again. It scares her to know that she’s been seen, it scares her that humanity might find them because of her, yet she still feels pulled towards the lagoon, towards the human with the nadeshiko pink hair.  
  
The other girl isn’t there, though. That’s for the best really, because Minjung has to stop looking for her, even though the sight of the empty edge makes her disappointed. She slips below the surface and closes her eyes. She’s trying to listen to the silent water around her but she hears nothing but her own inabilities to really listen.  
  
When she opens her eyes again, she sees the dark murky water around her; sand rising from the bottom and making the water seem darker. It’s broad daylight above the surface but Minjung keeps digging into the sand with her tail, obscuring the view of the human world she needs to hide from.  
  
  
  
“Hey Jinki,” Taemin says and wraps his fingers around Jinki’s wrist. Jinki turns around to look at him and fumbles with a book when it almost slides out of his hands. Taemin quickly reaches out to help Jinki with the book as well.  
  
“Mh?” Jinki asks and sends Taemin a smile.  
  
“Have you seen Junghee?”  
  
Jinki shakes his head. Taemin purses his lips and nods a little.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says and Taemin shakes his head.  
  
“No, it’s okay. Tell her I’m looking for her if you see her, okay?”  
  
Jinki nods and watches as Taemin turns around and leaves him in the hallway, shoulders slumping. Jinki takes a deep breath as he stares at the hallway, hoping to see Junghee and Taemin round the corner with laughter because they pranked him but nothing happens. People go and people come and time stands still while Jinki stands in the hallway.  
  
  
  
“Hey Kibum,” Taeyeon says and reaches out towards him. Kibum floats on the waves with his eyes closed and Taeyeon barely catches his fluke. The touch makes Kibum surprised and he dips below the surface instantly, only to watch Taeyeon follow him.  
  
“What?” he asks annoyed. He doesn’t like being disturbed when he’s floating. Taeyeon lowers her gaze for a second or two before she looks up again.  
  
“Do you know why Minjung is in the lagoon so often? She doesn’t want to talk to me and I kind of miss her company,” she says and Kibum raises an eyebrow. Why would Minjung be in the lagoon? It’s not time for the ahoroa ceremony nor are there any important meetings for the hapori. There are no news of anything that could require a meeting in the lagoon either. He shakes his head a little and Taeyeon nods in understanding.  
  
“Hey Taeyeon?” Kibum says and Taeyeon widens her eyes. “I’ll talk to her.”  
  
He sends her a smile and Taeyeon sends him a small smile back before she turns around and starts swimming back towards the hapori. Kibum lets himself float in the waves again, tail flicking the surface lightly as he lets the sun warm his face again. He needs to find a way to get her to open up again before he loses his best friend.  
  
  
  
Jinki doesn’t really mean to when he follows Junghee after school. He has skipped his last lecture for the first time in weeks and it’s really not on purpose but Junghee barely coming to school and her seeming more and more lost is worrying him. It’s on time he does something and when he can’t get her to talk, he has to do something differently.  
  
Jinki doesn’t really like the idea of following Junghee because he knows what it’s like to keep secrets. Maybe that is the reason he’s doing it anyway. He knows he should trust Junghee to open up to him when the time is right, but there is something that compels him to take action nonetheless.  
  
He follows Junghee to the lagoon and the atmosphere is strange. The last time he was here, he was here to say goodbye. That was weeks ago and he hasn’t felt the need to go here afterwards.  
  
Junghee, however, is watching the water with a distant gaze and it reminds him of the last time he sat down beside her and spilled his thoughts, his nightmares and his belief that something was there in the water. Junghee doesn’t say anything, however, and she doesn’t turn around to look at him.  
  
Jinki stands a few meters behind her and observes his best friend. Birds are calling out to each other around them and somewhere on the forest floor a hedgehog is looking through the bushes in search of food.  
  
Junghee lowers her head and Jinki feels his heart skip a beat at the thought of Junghee jumping but she doesn’t. She stays on the edge, gaze tilted towards the water. Jinki feels the need to see what she’s looking at but he doesn’t step closer. Instead he turns around, scared of the need to go close. He thought he was done with the lagoon but here he is, the need for answers and the horrifying voices of his nightmares returning to his memories.  
  
Jinki leaves the lagoon and promises himself to talk to Junghee tomorrow instead.  
  
  
  
Kibum doesn’t really mean to sneak up on Minjung except maybe he does. He wants to figure out why she has been isolating herself. He doesn’t mean to surprise her, though, and he doesn’t expect her to lurk just below the surface, looking longingly towards the human world. He sinks against the wall and observes her. She’s not blowing bubbles with her hands like she usually is and she’s not smiling. Her fingers are playing with vegetation from the walls of the lagoon and she’s focused on something above the water.  
  
When Kibum lifts his head, he finds the shadow of a human sitting at the edge of lagoon, looking at the water beneath as well. He shudders but stays where he is. Minjung doesn’t seem affected by the human. There is something so inherently wrong with the picture that Kibum can’t help but feel the unease settle in his body.  
  
This is the image of him when he was obsessed with laws and lagoons and humans months ago. The memories that Kibum has tried so hard to bury in the past months are suddenly flooding his mind, reminding him of the human he shouldn’t have saved.  
  
He shakes his head so violently that it causes ripples in the water. Minjung doesn’t react to his presence, however. Kibum can’t imagine that she hasn’t felt the water upset by his movements and although she’s not sensitive like he is, she cannot have ignored that.  
  
The more he watches her stare at the human world, entranced by something that cannot be explained, the more he feels the need to stay as well.  
  
It scares him a little because Kibum doesn’t want to sink back into the fear of questioning himself and their purpose. He doesn’t want to look for answers in the human world that scares him and he doesn’t want to associate the lagoon with humans. He doesn’t want to be here and he doesn’t want Minjung to be here either. It feels almost cursed. Ever since he saved the drowning human, everything has changed.  
  
Kibum bites his lower lip when he leaves Minjung alone in the lagoon, unable to stay longer with the memories flooding his mind. He’ll have to talk to her when he finds her in the open ocean later.  
  
  
  
The sun is setting behind her and Junghee wraps her cardigan a little closer around her shoulders in an attempt to fight off the cold. She doesn’t want to leave the lagoon.  
  
She has spent the past two weeks near the lagoon and nothing has happened so far. Junghee has almost convinced herself that it was a hallucination, that she dreamt the woman with the zaffre-colored hair breach the surface of the lagoon. This is the last time she’s here. She has promised herself that.  
  
Junghee makes a move to stand when the water suddenly stirs in the lagoon and there she is, the woman with the zaffre-blue hair. Junghee widens her eyes and almost loses her balance and topples into the lagoon. Her gasp has the other woman turning her head in Junghee’s direction and the two women stare at each other for what feels like an eternity. This time the woman doesn’t disappear, however. Junghee leans a little closer to the edge and blinks to make sure she’s really seeing her.  
  
“A… Are you okay?” she asks, the wind carrying her voice towards the water.  
  
“You haven’t seen me,” the woman says instead. Junghee blinks again. She’s absolutely sure she’s seeing her. This can’t be a hallucination.  
  
“Do you need help?” Junghee asks and the woman shakes her head, the long hair floating on top of the water.  
  
“Please just forget about me. Don’t come here anymore,” the stranger says. Junghee bites her cheek and nods. She’s about to ask why the other woman is in the water, when she dives again and Junghee swears she sees the flick of a tail before she disappears.  
  
  
  
The water is getting darker as the sun sets on the sky and Minjung is staring at the human world from her spot in the lagoon. She’s been here for hours, observing the human girl on the edge. She’s been here often in the past few weeks, always looking towards the water as if she’s looking for Minjung.  
  
Minjung knows she could just ignore her, could just pretend she was never spotted but the other girl is making it so impossibly hard to just forget. Minjung knows that she has broken the laws plenty of times with Kibum; she knows that she has been searching for treasures at the wrecks and followed fishermen just to cut their nets to save the fish. Minjung knows that she could turn this into no big deal because with the human there alone it doesn’t seem like she or the hapori is in any grave danger of being caught, skinned and eaten or put into small containers and on view.  
  
Still, it bothers her that she cannot fix this. So, she’s here now with courage that has been hard to find and the only solution she can think of.  
  
Minjung has promised herself to also tell Kibum how incredibly stupid she has been but not before she has dealt with it. She wants to tell the human girl to just forget about her. If this human girl is anything like the fishermen and the sailors, she won’t be difficult to convince. Humans are doubtful creatures by nature, that’s what the past weeks of observation have convinced her.  
  
When the human makes a move to stand, Minjung breaches the surface. Her heart is beating so loud in her chest she’s convinced she won’t be able to do anything but she still stays with her shoulders above water, locking eyes with the human. It makes fear crawl down her spine but mixed with the fear is an excitement that shouldn’t be there.  
  
“A… Are you okay?” the human asks and Minjung wants to answer, wants to say no, but she doesn’t because she’s not here to have a conversation.  
  
“You haven’t seen me,” she answers and feels the vibration of her voice. She can almost taste the mix of feelings that’s surging through her body as she says the words and she just hopes that the human doesn’t detect the nervousness in her voice.  
  
“Do you need help?” the strange human asks again and Minjung wills herself to forget the kindness from a human that thinks Minjung is human as well.  
  
“Please just forget about me. Don’t come here anymore.”  
  
When Minjung utters her words, she feels her throat constrict. She wants to dive again, hide at the bottom of the lagoon and scold herself for her stupidity but she needs the confirmation that the human girl is going to forget her.  
  
When she nods, Minjung turns around and dives below the surface again. She flicks her tail and powers through kelp and vegetation as she finds a spot for herself at the bottom.  
  
  
  
“Jinki!” Junghee says and startles her best friend.  
  
“Long time no see,” Jinki says and Junghee rolls her eyes.  
  
“Do you still have the old book about legends and myths your grandmother gave you?”  
  
Jinki closes his notebook with star notes and nods. “Yes, why?”  
  
“Can I borrow it?” she asks and Jinki crosses his arms and looks at her.  
  
“What do you need it for?” he asks and Junghee sighs.  
  
“Does it say anything about mermaids? Is there such a myth?” she asks. Jinki almost falls from his chair in surprise.  
  
“Why do you ask about that?”  
  
“Just answer me,” Junghee says impatiently and Jinki sighs.  
  
“Yes, there are myths like that. Plenty of them. Mermaids are not exactly uncommon legends; did you never listen to the lagoon guide?”  
  
Junghee waves his answer away.  
  
“I meant, in your book.”  
  
Jinki raises an eyebrow.  
  
“Why do you ask about that book specifically? You can just look it up on the internet.”  
  
Junghee deflates and pouts.  
  
“Because I trust your grandma. The internet is kind of unreliable.”  
  
Jinki chuckles a little.  
  
“Right,” he says. “But yes, there is also a legend of mermaids in the book. Don’t tell me you believe in mermaids?”  
  
“Can I borrow it?” she asks again, evading his question.  
  
“You who teased me with the Starchildren wants to borrow my book because you want to look up mermaids? Mermaids don’t exist Junghee.”  
  
Junghee raises an eyebrow.  
  
“Says you who believes our souls are created of stars. Can we stop discussing my intentions and you can just answer me on whether or not I can borrow your book?”  
  
Jinki sighs and nods.  
  
“Sure. But only if you let me in on your research because I’m tired of you being isolated and seeing you sad. I miss my best friend.”  
  
Junghee looks up with a surprised gaze before she softens into a smile and wraps her arms around him.  
  
“I’ll come by later and we can have an evening of stargazing and being best friends like when we we’re 12,” she says and Jinki nods a little.  
  
“I’m looking forward to that,” he says. “Oh and by the way, Taemin is really worried about you. Maybe you should spend a day with your boyfriend as well.”  
  
Junghee nods a little with a guilty smile. Maybe she should spend a day with her boyfriend as well.  
  
  
  
“Kibum!” Minjung exclaims and surprises Kibum who’s catching herring. He turns around with half a herring hanging out of his mouth and he raises an eyebrow in question. “We need to talk.”  
  
Kibum swallows the fish and nods a little.  
  
“What’s up?” he asks and forgets the feast behind them so he can focus on his best friend.  
  
“I’ve done something really fucked up,” she says and Kibum tilts his head in question. She grabs his wrist and drags him towards the steep end. Kibum swims beside her, letting her drag him away from the hapori. When she stops, they’re 50 meters from the submarine volcano.  
  
“Why here?” he asks and sinks towards the bottom where he starts looking through the sand with his hands.  
  
“I don’t want anyone to listen in on us,” she says and that gets Kibum’s attention.  
  
“So what did you do that was so bad?”  
  
“I got spotted by a human.”  
  
Kibum gapes and lets go of the crustacean he has just dug from the sand.  
  
“What?” he asks and Minjung nods a little.  
  
“I didn’t mean to,” she whispers. Kibum knows that, however.  
  
“How?”  
  
He still can’t fully believe it. Minjung sinks towards him and places herself on the bottom as well.  
  
“When you saved the human in the lagoon, what made you come back?” she asks instead of answering his question. “Was it the human?”  
  
Kibum raises an eyebrow in pure disbelief.  
  
“No,” he says. “I really don’t like the human world and you know that. Wait, the lagoon? Did you get seen in the lagoon?” he exclaims. Minjung shushes him.  
  
“Kibuuuum,” she whines and Kibum sighs.  
  
“You’re an idiot and you know it.”  
  
Minjung nods and pouts a little. Kibum rolls his eyes and hits her tail lightly with his hand.  
  
“I dealt with the human, though,” she says and Kibum widens his eyes.  
  
“You killed the human?!” he asks loudly and Minjung shushes him again.  
  
“Of course not, you idiot.”  
  
Kibum doesn’t get it. Minjung takes a deep breath before she begins to explain. Her explanation only has Kibum even more incredulous.  
  
“You really are an idiot,” he says but his lips tilt upwards in a smile and Minjung giggles a little. A large shadow over them has them both looking up. Kibum’s stomach growls and Minjung laughs out loud. “And you robbed me of my dinner because the whales have probably eaten all the herring by now.”  
  
Kibum looks towards the humpback whale that swims past them towards the herring school with a pout on his lips and a frown between his eyebrows. Minjung just shakes her head.  
  
“Let’s go to the wrecks! We’ll find something better!” she promises. Kibum just rolls his eyes but he follows the celadon-colored tail as Minjung starts towards the wrecks, away from the submarine volcano.  
  
  
  
Jinki laughs and grabs a marshmallow he can put on his stick. Junghee leans back in her chair and looks towards the star-filled sky. The telescope stands to their left, pointing at the sky and the bonfire in front of them heats up the already warm summer night. Jinki’s parents have long since left them alone to go to sleep but the two friends are still awake.  
  
The old book Jinki has inherited from his grandmother is open on the legends of creatures of the sea and his notebook of star constellations are open on the latest page.  
  
When his marshmallow is roasted to a golden caramel-brown he removes it from the fire and gently plucks it off the stick with his lips. He has missed spending time with Junghee like this. It’s carefree and there are no secrets between them right now.  
  
Jinki likes these evenings. They were common when they were younger, staying up late on their vacations to watch the stars and discuss the legends Junghee didn’t believe and Jinki so adamantly and stubbornly wanted to prove was real.  
  
“What would you do if the Starchildren legend really turned out to be real?” Junghee asks when Jinki licks the sugary residue from his fingers. He shrugs a little.  
  
“I don’t know,” he says and looks up and gets eye contact with her.  
  
“Eh?” she says. “You should totally get a Nobel prize in philosophy or something!”  
  
That has Jinki laughing and he sends her a smile before he reaches out to grab another marshmallow.  
  
“That doesn’t exist Junghee,” he says and Junghee snorts offended. “Do you believe in mermaids after reading the legend?”  
  
Junghee sighs a little.  
  
“I don’t know. You know, you’re the superstitious one of us. Remember when I saved you from Chaewon and her gang in middle school when they were mocking you with the legends calling you a nerd?” she asks and Jinki forgets his marshmallow momentarily to look at her with a frown.  
  
“You didn’t save me,” he mumbles and Junghee laughs out loud. Jinki shoves her in her chair and almost makes her topple over and she screams. It has him laughing out loud.  
  
It isn’t until Junghee laughs and points to his marshmallow he realizes that it has turned charcoal-black and there’s a small flame at the corner. He sighs and blows out the flame before he puts the stick with the burnt marshmallow on the plate that had earlier held biscuits. Junghee sends him a smile and turns back to the sky.  
  
Jinki is just happy he has his best friend back.  
  
  
  
Kibum laughs and hoist himself onto the sharp rock. He rests his back against the dry stone and lets the small waves tickle his flukes. Minjung rests her elbows on a smaller rock beneath him and looks at him.  
  
“You’ll get seen,” she says and Kibum snorts a little.  
  
“It’s night, Min. And also, if I get seen, at least I’m not the only one.”  
  
He sends her a smirk and Minjung reaches up to smack his hip. He chuckles and uses his hands to sit up so he can look down on her. It’s been a long time since they have been together at the cliffs.  
  
They never used to sit on them like this but with the moon being hidden by the clouds right now there is minimal danger of being spotted. Not only because only idiotic humans enter the cliffs at night but also because he hasn’t felt a lot of artificially created waves from boat engines in the waters today. There is always the risk of meeting great whites but for some reason, the risk hasn’t deterred either of the two young merpeople in going to the cliffs.  
  
Kibum is just happy to have his best friend back as adventurous as she has always been.  
  
Minjung slaps his tail again and Kibum reaches a hand down so he can hoist her up on the rock as well. They’re sitting close together, Minjung’s pectoral fins making Kibum’s smooth tail itch a little but he doesn’t complain. This is more important than pushing her back into the water.  
  
“What did the human look like?” he asks after a while and Minjung raises an eyebrow.  
  
“What?” she asks. Kibum just looks at her incredulously.  
  
“The human that spotted you,” he says and Minjung bites her cheek while in thought.  
  
“She was pretty,” she says and Kibum laughs a little.  
  
“Oh, come on. Are you for real right now?”  
  
Minjung snorts offended and pushes him towards the waters. Kibum barely keeps his balance and he scowls at her, his flukes hitting the rock hard in annoyance.  
  
“It’s true!”  
  
Kibum repeats her in a mocking tone and this time Minjung pushes him off the rock for real. The water makes a splash when he hits it and Kibum lifts his flukes above water so he can purposefully splash Minjung. She laughs as she wiggles off the rock as well and hits the water. Her best friend is glaring smugly at her and she sends bubbles his way with her hands. Kibum rolls his eyes but still dives towards the rocks beneath them, Minjung following him.  
  
  
  
Taemin rests his chin in his hand as he stares out of his open window. The streetlights are obscuring the view of the clear sky and Taemin wishes he could turn them all off so he could look at the stars only.  
  
Tonight is worse than usual. The longing and loneliness he has been trying to suppress for years is back again and it’s stronger than it usually is. He wishes he could call Junghee but he knows she’s with Jinki tonight. He also knows that deep down, it doesn’t change anything. Taemin loves Junghee, but she isn’t enough to remove his loneliness when it overtakes him like this.  
  
It’s been like this since Taemin was young. He doesn’t understand exactly what it is because Taemin has never been neglected and he has never had any reason to be lonely, yet there are still things missing from his life, things he cannot explain, an undeniable loneliness that surges through his bones.  
  
On these nights, he usually turns to the sky but living in the middle of the city often makes it difficult to really look at the stars. On these nights, he envies Jinki and their house in the suburbs and his telescope.  
  
Taemin sometimes sits on the rooftop of the apartment building and looks at the stars on the nights where the loneliness feels suffocating but he can’t find it in himself to walk there tonight. Tonight, all he wants is to find what it is that is making his life so empty in the sky, but the stars don’t talk and they don’t have the answers.  
  
  
  
Taeyeon’s sharp dorsal fin cuts through the ocean as she swims south. She isn’t a fast swimmer so she can’t swim too far from the hapori if she wants to get back but she needs to get away from known waters. Swimming on the surface is usually dangerous but it’s the best way for her to gauge how far she is and it comforts her to feel the waves on her back.  
  
The starry sky blinks down at her but Taeyeon is too caught up in her own anxiety to notice. She feels lonely. This is not a new feeling in particular.  
  
When she was young she blamed it on her family being separated from haporis and ever since she and her mother found the hapori where she has spent the last few years of her life, she has blamed her loneliness on the separation from her father. Deep inside, however, Taeyeon knows that it’s not the truth. There is something out there that is missing from her life and it makes no sense.  
  
She stops and lifts her head above the surface so she can look at the horizon. She tilts her head towards the stars and closes her eyes, lets the night sky soothe her, just a little, before she dives again, this time deeper than before.  
  
The surface area is dangerous at night but the deep waters aren’t exactly safe either. Taeyeon isn’t particularly concerned about predators tonight, however. All she wants to do is to swim and forgets, all she wants to do is heal.  
  
There is something wrong tonight, the feeling of emptiness is stronger tonight – and Taeyeon dislikes the feeling. The deep waters don’t have answers, however, and Taeyeon is left on the bottom, looking towards the surface where the moon shines through the water and illuminates everything in a soft light. If only there was a way to figure out what she’s missing.


	5. Chapter 5

 

 

Junghee’s memories are invading her thoughts at night. She’s supposed to be sleeping but for some reason, she keeps thinking about the woman in the lagoon that asked her to leave, to forget her. The legends of creatures of the sea in Jinki’s book spoke of creatures who lured sailors to the sharp rocks, just to help them out of danger again.  
  
Junghee has seen plenty of old legends like that, sirens, mermaids, water nymphs. It doesn’t really matter what name she puts on them and what stories she reads; she can’t forget the woman. It bothers her because logically speaking mermaids don’t exist. Mermaids shouldn’t exist. But Junghee swears she saw the end of a tail and she swears that the woman dived into the water instead of jumping out of it.  
  
She shakes her head a little and buries into her pillow. This is stupid. So little of the ocean has been discovered and with so many legends of these creatures, maybe it isn’t impossible? But that would mean that Junghee has seen a mermaid and how is she supposed to forget that?  
  
She whines and buries deeper into her pillow. Screw everything, she has to go back to the lagoon.  
  
  
  
Her memories are invading her thoughts at night. Minjung is supposed to be looking for akaika’s but she can’t focus. Around her, the cephalopods are trying to hide between stones and rocks. Minjung is likely going to sleep hungry tonight if she manages to sleep at all.  
  
Her māmā sends her a concerned gaze when she swims past but Minjung just sends her a smile. She keeps remembering the human and her kind brown eyes. There was something in them, something that didn’t look like fear or greed and it has Minjung curious. She remembers a story her māmā once told her about a stupid merperson who got spotted by the humans and ended up caught in their large, terrifying glass boxes resembling the ocean.  
  
The more she remembers the human, however, the more difficult it becomes to imagine humans as such mean creatures. Minjung has been warned about humans all her life but maybe they aren’t that bad. It’s stupid, really. She really is an idiot. She shouldn’t even have this kind of thought but she can’t stop herself.  
  
Minjung shakes her head and watches as the ocean slowly turns lighter as the moon is replaced with the sun. So much for sleep and so much for dinner. The thoughts of the human girl are still occupying her mind, curiosity clouding her judgment.  
  
  
  
Jinki feels a weight on his back and automatically assumes it’s Junghee. It isn’t, however. It’s Taemin that sends him a large grin and lets go of his shoulders. Jinki sends him a questioning gaze.  
  
“What?” he asks and Taemin keeps grinning like he’s the happiest he has ever been. Jinki doubts that’s the case, however.  
  
When Taemin and Junghee started dating, they were both glowing like they were the luckiest people alive. Jinki is pretty convinced he is unable to make them glow that way considering he’s not dating either of them. Not that Jinki wants to; he can’t imagine anything worse than falling in love with his best friend’s boyfriend and Junghee doesn’t stand a chance. Jinki likes to tell her that she wouldn’t have stood a chance, even if he had been straight.  
  
“Thanks,” Taemin says. Jinki raises an eyebrow.  
  
“For what?” he asks, even more confused now than he had been when Taemin latched onto his back.  
  
“For bringing Junghee back.”  
  
Jinki watches the smaller girl hurry towards them and jump onto Taemin’s back, Taemin just laughing.  
  
“You guys are plotting something against me and that’s not cool so now I’m stealing my boyfriend back. I can’t hang out later, though, Jinki. I’m really sorry but Sodam wanted to go to the theater and it’s been a while since I’ve seen her. I hope it’s okay!”  
  
Jinki sends her a smile.  
  
“Of course! Say hi from me!”  
  
Junghee laughs and nods.  
  
“I will.”  
  
With those words, Jinki watches Junghee pull Taemin with her the other way, back towards the library.  
  
  
  
Kibum spins around, creating smaller whirlpools under his tail as he listens to the ocean. There are fishermen in the area and he has warned the hapori of their whispers and their wetsuits, but nobody seems to care much about their own safety for now. They haven’t seen the boats yet, Kibum only knows because he can feel and hear the motors in the waters.  
  
Earlier he would have been upset by the knowledge that nobody heeds his warnings, especially if it is going to mean that someone is getting hurt but he trusts Minjung’s māmā this time around. He has other things to think about. Someone lets their fingers through his hair and pulls softly and Kibum turns around, expecting to find Minjung, but stares at Taeyeon’s silver hair and lavender grey eyes instead.  
  
“Oh,” he says and Taeyeon lets go of his hair.  
  
“I just wanted to…” she says before she gets interrupted by Minjung and Bora.  
  
“Taeyeon!” Bora says and pulls at her wrist. Taeyeon looks at Kibum with a grateful smile. Kibum doesn’t understand anything. “Come on.”  
  
“I was talking to Taeyeon,” he says and frowns and Minjung laughs a little before she circles around him a couple of times.  
  
“But we were going to have a kōhine-only talk and you’re obviously not a kōhine so you can’t join,” she says in a light manner and tickles Kibum’s waist. Kibum squirms away from her and pokes Minjung’s shoulder.  
  
“Then what are you doing there? You’re not a kōhine either,” he says and Minjung frowns a little. Bora rolls her eyes.  
  
“Tānes,” she says and Kibum is confused, even when they drag Taeyeon away from him, towards the smaller caves close to the entrance to the lagoon. He figures Taeyeon didn’t want to say anything important.  
  
  
  
The days get shorter and the nights longer as the temperature starts to drop when fall starts to sweep over the country. Jinki works through his classes and studies the night sky when there aren’t too many clouds but he starts to feel isolated. His nights are filled with dreams he can’t quite understand and despite everything seeming normal, there is something that keeps him from other people.  
  
Jinki has never been extraordinarily social. He was shy as a child and has only ever had a small but tight friend circle. It never bothered him, but now he barely meets people outside of classes and it leaves him depressed. Jinki feels smaller than he wants to and he almost loses interest in it all. Junghee knows something is wrong with him but Jinki can’t really explain.  
  
He sighs and looks at his books. He’s working on an essay that’s due in two days but he can’t quite focus. There are something pulling at him, something he hasn’t felt in a long time. It’s something Jinki thought he had put behind months ago but now, in the silent night, it’s there and it’s begging for him to go.  
  
Jinki ignores the pull, though, and forces himself to focus on the essay. He doesn’t want to return to the lagoon ever again. It only brings him misery.  
  
  
  
The waters slowly turn colder as the moon stays on the sky longer and Kibum is starting to get restless. There is something in the waters that has him annoyed and he can’t put a finger on it. It’s like smaller waves washing over him, irritating him like wrasse trying to clean his neck. He ignores the call from the hapori as he swims towards the open ocean.  
  
Kibum gets angry quicker these days and it hurts the merpeople around him. He knows he has hurt his māmā and that Minjung is getting wary of him. There is nothing he can do to change it, though. He wishes his pāpā was there to teach him how to ignore the waters but there is nothing he can do but listen.  
  
Kibum has always had a temper and he’s always been rebellious, but these days, it’s getting worse than it has ever been. Kibum sometimes wishes he could stop it, could go back to normal but despite everything seeming normal, there is something that’s off.  
  
At first, he assumed it had to do with Minjung’s spotting but nothing has happened since then. The fishermen stay away from them and nobody has been coming to catch them. The lagoon is still sacred and no humans have been jumping into it. The only thing Kibum knows is that he won’t be there to save them, because he doesn’t want to return to the lagoon.  
  
With a flick of his tail he swims forward and towards the edge and the deeper ocean.  
  
  
  
Junghee shouldn’t be near the lagoon. It’s getting colder and she’s dressed in a warm sweater as she sits on the ground before the water and stares at it. She had promised the woman to forget her, but that has proved impossible and even though Junghee knows better than to keep returning, she’s still here, still hoping.  
  
The sky is cloudy and it makes everything darker, the lagoon a less pleasant place during fall and winter. The guided tours have stopped and Junghee can’t hear the birds singing.  
  
The weather forecast had said rain but so far, the ground is still dry and Junghee is still waiting for the water from the sky. She pulls her knees against her chest, hoping to keep a little warm, when she closes her eyes and lets the silence lull her to sleep.  
  
  
  
Minjung shouldn’t be in the lagoon. It’s a dangerous place and she has tried everything she can to avoid it, but there is something pulling her towards it. She thinks she understands why Kibum was here after he saved the drowning human, because for some reason, it calls out to her, begs her to stay and watch the brown edge.  
  
She sighs, blowing bubbles in the process, before she closes her eyes and lets the water calm her. The water is never upset in the lagoon, always silent, always calm. The vegetation on the bottom sways gently as usual, the undersea cave that connects the lagoon with the ocean slowly replacing the water in the lagoon with fresher waters. The water in the lagoon is warmer than the water in the open ocean, but Minjung doesn’t care much for the heat.  
  
She shakes her head when she opens her eyes and breaches the surface, only to find the pink-haired girl on the edge again. She’s dressed in what looks like warmer clothes, sitting further back which is why Minjung hasn’t been able to see her from below. Her eyes are closed and even though Minjung has the chance to run away, she stays over the surface, observing the human.  
  
  
  
“I’m worried about you, Jinki,” his mother says and Jinki looks up from his book. He’s sitting on their porch, dressed in a large sweater and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders to fend off the cold.  
  
“You don’t have to be,” he says and returns to his book. His mother sits down beside him, making it impossible for him to focus on it and he sighs.  
  
“You’re never with anyone anymore. I haven’t seen Junghee in months and you never talk to anybody. All you do is sit and read and observe the night sky.”  
  
Jinki bites his cheek and lets her words sink in. They’re not untrue. Jinki hasn’t been hanging out with anyone in the past months. He sighs a little and turns to her, a small smile on his lips.  
  
“It’s okay, mom. It’s just because I’ve been busy with school.”  
  
She pats his shoulder a little before she stands again.  
  
“At least get inside. You’ll catch a cold.”  
  
Jinki nods when she walks back into the house. He doesn’t want to go inside, however. Inside feels stuffy and wrong and Jinki can’t explain it so he doesn’t.  
  
  
  
“Kibum, you can’t just ignore your duties,” his māmā says. Kibum rolls his eyes in annoyance and swims away from her. It only has her calling out to him, a firm grip on his wrist preventing him from moving further away.  
  
“Let me go,” he hisses and she lets go surprised.  
  
“Kibum…” she says and Kibum glares at her. The water around him is tense and the waves above them are higher, angrier. “Calm down.”  
  
He knows he shouldn’t be angry with her. Her demands are reasonable and he really has been neglecting his duties. He didn’t go find food and he doesn’t watch the nohinohi’s like everybody else. The only thing he does is swim far away and hoping to get rid of the anger he doesn’t know.  
  
“Stop bothering me!” he says and she looks at him, hurt. “You’re all just annoying me! Stop with the ridiculous chores, I’m not a slave! I don’t want to be here and this is ridiculous. You think you know best but do you even know anything? You don’t know me! Let me go!”  
  
He backs away from her and hears her calling his name again when he turns around and swims away towards the shipwrecks.  
  
  
  
Junghee is stupid. It’s raining heavily, she’s soaked to the bone, her hair clinging to her back and it’s 3 AM but she needs some clarification. Not only is her best friend isolating himself again, she also can’t stop dreaming about tails and the legends of mermaids are haunting her. She needs just one last good look, just one last denial. One last, she tells herself. That’s why she has snuck out of the house a night in mid October.  
  
She’s making her way through mudded paths until she stands at the edge of the lagoon and stares at the dark water. In a brief moment of insanity she almost wants to jump down, to truly make sure that what she saw that time was a hallucination but even though she can swim, there’s no way she can find her way back to the edge if she jumps, so she stays, watching the rain disappearing into the calm water.  
  
Please, she begs silently. Let there be a reason to her dreams, to the way the lagoon keeps pulling her towards it. Let there be some way to confirm one way or another so she can leave, go back, focus on Jinki and Taemin and everything can go back to what it once was. Junghee is exhaling deeply while the water continues to fall around her.  
  
A thunder roars far away and the trees sway dangerously above her in the wind. Yet Junghee stays. She almost doesn’t catch the bubble that surfaces in between the ripples created by rain but it’s there, she’s absolutely positive. Another bubble follows the first and then another and another. Junghee worries her lower lip between her teeth as she almost pleads to some higher ups that the woman will appear again, that Junghee won’t scare her away.  
  
The woman almost blinds Junghee in the night when she finally does breach. She’s beautiful, more than Junghee remembers her. Her zaffre blue hair stands out against the dark of the water and the muddy brown of the sides but she’s gorgeous. Junghee almost stumbles and loses her balances, but she manages to stay on the edge. Her gasp is heard over the rain, though, because the woman in the water tenses.  
  
“Wait!” Junghee shouts, her hand reaching towards the water. “Don’t go. Please.”  
  
She can hear the sobs that colors her voice at the thought of losing sight of the woman and once again be left alone to dreams and thoughts that will haunt her and have her question her sanity.  
  
  
  
“Wait!”  
  
Minjung freezes and stares at the wall in front of her, vegetation clinging to the brown mud as if they were one.  
  
“Don’t go. Please.”  
  
She knows the human is there; she recognizes her voice. She hasn’t dared turn around and face her yet, though. Minjung isn’t instantly scared of the human and that’s wrong. She should dip into the ocean, swim far away, hide with the hapori, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t because she has heard the human before, has talked to her, even if it was only a warning.  
  
She has seen the sincerity in the human’s eyes and it doesn’t scare her anymore. The humans she was once so afraid of has been replaced with the one human she’s curious about – the human with the nadeshiko pink hair.  
  
She slowly turns around in the water and looks up and meets the eyes of the human. They stare at each other.  
  
“I’m … I’m not going to hurt you,” the human says and sinks down on her knees. Minjung observes her in silence. She wants to talk but she doesn’t know what to say. “Are you …”  
  
The human doesn’t continue and Minjung blinks a little confused. Is she what? She lets a hand run through her hair and dips her shoulder below the water so only her head can be seen. It feels a little safer than having her entire torso out of water.  
  
“Am I?” she asks when a minute has passed by and the human has said nothing. The rain is slowly starting to fade, the touch of the raindrops soft like velvet. The human widens her eyes in surprise.  
  
“I … I mean…”  
  
Minjung smiles a little at the human’s confusion.  
  
“What do they call you?” she asks.  
  
“Call me?” the human asks and Minjung nods. “Oh, uhm, my name is Junghee. Kim Junghee.”  
  
There’s silence between them while Minjung mumbles the name to herself. It sounds pretty. Not at all scary, just soft and nice. It suits the color of her hair, Minjung decides.  
  
“They call me Minjung,” she says after a while, caution thrown to the wind. Junghee makes an ‘oh’ sound before she repeats the name and smiles a little.  
  
“It’s pretty,” Junghee says and Minjung is about to tell Junghee the same about her name when Junghee sneezes into her hands. The wind is cold but Minjung barely feels it with her body dipped into the lagoon. Junghee just giggles a little.  
  
“Can I… come back? Will I see you again?”  
  
The question is loaded with possibilities and despite the danger of meeting up with a human repeatedly she nods and tells Junghee that they can meet again in the lagoon if she shows up. Junghee sends her a last smile and a wave before she gets up and leaves the lagoon with a ‘see you’. Minjung’s heart beats faster than normally when she dips back under the water and she twirls around kelp in anxious curiosity. She’s stupid.  
  
  
  
The sand is hard beneath his feet. The sun is shining from a blue sky after the rainstorm yesterday night. Taemin is staring at the ocean, two swans sailing the waves that lick at the sand, sometimes getting a little too close to his feet.  
  
He’s focused on walking forward in a straight line, the scent of the salt water calming him down for some reason. It has taken him an hour to drive to the beach but he doesn’t regret it. There’s something different out here, a calm that doesn’t exist in the city and a pull he doesn’t find elsewhere.  
  
When he stops, he turns around and looks at the ocean, he blinks a couple of times in the sun. It’s windier out here, but not so cold that it bothers him in his jacket. Kelp is washed ashore in big bulks, black contrasting the white sand beautifully. If he was here with friends they would have complained, but Taemin is left to the wind and his own thoughts.  
  
The waves are getting bigger and he has to retreat further up the beach to the softer sand where he sits down. The swans are now further away and Taemin closes his eyes with a deep breath. The scent of the sea still calms him down and the melody the waves create makes him yawn.  
  
For some reason, he is less lonely when he’s at the ocean. Taemin doesn’t understand it, but he is grateful anyway. If an hour in car is all it takes for him to relax, to forget, then it’s an hour he’s willing to spend over and over again.  
  
  
  
There are starfish and starry flounders spread across the sandy bottom of the ocean as she glides through the water in slow movements. Taeyeon lets her hand down and she grabs a chunk of sand that slowly slides through her fingers and colors the water a murky beige before it settles on the floor again. She avoids a crab that gets a little too close to her fluke and continues her way through the water near the shore.  
  
It’s dangerous for her to be here, dangerous to even come this close to anything human but Taeyeon likes it near the shore. There is a different calm near the shore that doesn’t exist in the ocean. She knows it’s easier for her to beach when she’s this close, but she’ll be careful. She’s small and lithe anyway and her flukes are so small it’ll be easier for her to manage small movements. She’s not like any of the other merpeople in the hapori and she knows that. Being closer to the shore is more comfortable, though.  
  
There is something in the ocean bed when she gets close. It’s like it whispers to her, tells her tales of the humans that walk the Earth. Humans she should fear and humans she does fear, if she’s honest.  
  
But she likes watching the beach anyway, likes the creatures that live closer to the shore. They have different stories to tell. And besides, Taeyeon has learned that despite the fear of humans, as long as it isn’t summer, there won’t be a lot of humans walking the sandy beach as the weather will be far too cold for them. She won’t be in any danger.  
  
She flicks her tail, lifts her hips just slightly and her dorsal fin cuts through the waters before it dips below again.  
  
  
  
Jinki forces himself through the group of people and into the classroom.  
  
November is slowly approaching and with November comes midterms. This means, that Jinki has been forced out of his isolation if he doesn’t want to fall behind in class and while he still doesn’t talk a lot to many of his classmates because they’re as busy as he is, it does help a little with his worried parents.  
  
The colder weather is also making it less desirable to stay outside on the porch, watching stars, and Jinki has, much to his own disappointment, started to focus on the lagoon again. Mostly he considers it Junghee’s fault. Her sudden interest in creatures of the sea has spurred on old thoughts and dreams Jinki thought he had long forgotten. It could be a result of his isolation as well, but Jinki dislikes the thought. It’s easier to blame it on Junghee.  
  
He sits down at the table and finds his books, only to look up and blink when someone bumps into him from beside. He looks over and finds a girl he has never seen before, sends her a small smile before he focuses back on his books. He can hear the silent tapping against her phone when she texts her friends, can feel her looking at him and it makes him uncomfortable.  
  
Jinki is determined not to talk to her, however. He’s too much of a mess to deal with other people.  
  
  
  
Kibum follows the common bottlenose dolphin pod in an attempt to control his own temper. The dolphins are swimming fast, weaving in and out between one another as they jump above the surface in a playful game. Kibum is letting his fluke drive him through the water, the sun shining on the surface, letting his seashell colored tail shine like pearl.  
  
He knows the dolphins don’t care about his company, can feel the mood in the water as they swim further and further from the hapori. He’s here mostly because his temper is starting to get the best of him and it brings all kinds of trouble with it.  
  
Kibum has been trying to blame everything but himself in the past couple of weeks but has come up unsuccessful. He knows there is only one to blame and that one is him. He needs to talk to someone about it, but he’s a little afraid of admitting that the human world and the saving of that one human boy in the lagoon is starting to mess with him again. He doesn’t like admitting that maybe he was wrong when he chose to ignore it all in favor of forgetting because forgetting is impossible these days and it clouds everything he does and everything he says.  
  
A dolphin bumps into him in clumsy movements as it tries to jump above water and Kibum is thrown off-balance and left behind the pod as they continue forward.  
  
He’s in a part of the ocean where he rarely gets, far off the coast, far away from the hapori and left to the bare ocean bed that stretches far below him in the darkness. Fish and cephalopods occupy the waters around him and he closes his eyes and lets out an elegant ‘ah’ in the hopes of echolocation helping him find his way back home.  
  
  
  
“Minjung?” Junghee calls out towards the blue lagoon. The surface is silent. “Minjung?” she tries again, hoping for something to start stirring.  
  
It’s November and the temperature has dropped below 10 degrees Celsius. She’s bundled up in big sweaters and her padded jacket. Junghee had spent the last two weeks with Taemin, cramming before midterms and panicking over exams she was sure she was going to fail, but now that it is all over, she has sought out the lagoon again, waiting for confirmation that there really is a mermaid living in the lagoon. A beautiful mermaid that Junghee shouldn’t dream of but does anyway and a mermaid that seems to attract the most primal of Junghee’s desires.  
  
The water ripples on the surface for a second or two before Minjung breaches and pulls her hair out of her eyes. She smiles, her eyes crinkling in a way that both hides the azure blue color of her eyes and makes them absolutely enchanting. Junghee doesn’t even notice she’s smiling until her muscles start to hurt in the cold.  
  
“Junghee!” the mermaid says and dips below water so only her head is showing. Junghee sits down on the edge of the lagoon, wishing to be closer but not knowing how to. “I was catching crayfish.”  
  
Junghee has no idea what a crayfish is but she just nods, entranced by the woman in the water. Now that they’re finally face to face without the fear and the disbelief, Junghee finds herself unable to ask all the questions she has had in the past weeks. Minjung continues to dismantle the crayfish, it seems, as she brings up what looks like a lobster tail and starts sucking on it.  
  
They stare at each other curiously in the silent November evening and Junghee bites her lower lip a little.  
  
  
  
“So,” Minjung says and sucks at the crayfish tail to get the last meat out of it. It also helps her arrange all the millions of questions she has about the human world so she can ask them all without offending the human. The dangers are long forgotten now that she’s actually looking at the human again. Junghee really doesn’t look that dangerous. “What do humans do?”  
  
The question doesn’t at all sound like she wanted it to, but Junghee blinks and smiles so Minjung guesses it isn’t as offensive as it could have been.  
  
“Do?” Junghee asks and tilts her head in a cute way that shows confusion. Minjung scolds herself for thinking the human is cute, but nods her head anyway, hoping to get her curiosity fulfilled.  
  
“Yes! Besides destroying the oceans and sitting here, what do humans do?”  
  
Minjung frowns a little when she finishes her sentence but Junghee just snorts.  
  
“I’m sorry about the ocean-thing I guess. I go to university, though,” she says and Minjung lets go of the crayfish and lets it drop towards the bottom of the lagoon.  
  
“What’s university?” she asks curiously and Junghee giggles, the sound almost as beautiful as whale song.  
  
“An educational institution,” she says and Minjung frowns, getting confused.  
  
“What?” Minjung deadpans and Junghee laughs out loud, her giggles turning to laughter and that Minjung must admit is more beautiful than anything she has ever heard.  
  
“Humans go to school to become smarter. We teach each other things like language and science.”  
  
Minjung isn’t entirely sure what science is, but she gets the teaching each other language so she assumes she knows what university is as well. It can’t be that different from how they teach their young ones to survive, right?  
  
“Ooooooh,” she says. Junghee nods a little when her laughter stops and she swings her legs against the edge, shoes hitting the muddy wall and the browning vegetation.  
  
“What about you? What do you do?”  
  
Minjung lets a hand through her hair before she bites her lower lip.  
  
“Eat? And watch the nohinohi’s and play around.”  
  
Junghee looks awfully confused at that.  
  
“Nohinohi’s?” she asks and Minjung nods.  
  
“Yeah, uh, you know?” she tries but Junghee shakes her head.  
  
“I have no idea,” she admits and Minjugn bites her cheek and tries to find an explanation.  
  
“Like little ones? Our calves?” She grimaces when she realizes that doesn’t sound right at all. “You know?”  
  
Junghee frowns a little.  
  
“Your babies?” she asks, unsure of herself, and Minjung frowns as well.  
  
“Babies?”  
  
Junghee laughs again.  
  
“Oh my god, we have less in common than I thought we’d have,” she says and Minjung thinks it sounds offensive but she’s way too curious to really take offense. Junghee sends her a smile so soft that Minjung thinks it’s okay, even if they have nothing in common because Junghee may the best human to ever exist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wrasse - a large family of fish, in this case only thought of as cleaner fish (cleaner wrasse). 
> 
> Akaika - also called neon flying squid. A species of - well, squids. 


End file.
